Saturday Night Dance Club

Pearl's young world is shattered when Papa orders her to leave home. She takes with her the secret of catching Papa in the pantry with the maid. Pearl finds a job in the city. On weekends she heads downtown to the Canteen to volunteer as a "suitable young lady" to dance with the boys in uniform. Pearl considers this her patriotic duty --until Will sweeps her into his arms and heart. More

Pearl's young world is shattered when Papa orders her to leave home long before she is prepared. She takes with her the secret of catching Papa in the pantry with the maid.

After moving into Mrs. Lacey's Boarding House, Pearl and her chum Ella find suitable employment in the city. On weekends they head downtown to the Canteen to volunteer as "suitable young ladies" to dance with the boys in uniform. Pearl considers this her patriotic duty--and a whole lot of fun--until Will sweeps her into his arms and heart.

The Starlite Ballroom becomes the Saturday destination for good times, where the four couples escape their worries and dance their blues away.

Karen Truesdell Riehl has woven a heart-wrenching story out of bits and pieces of history gleaned from old family letters and photographs. The story is fiction, but her characters will live in your memories forever.

Reviews: "Saturday Night Dance Club by Karen Truesdell Riehl is a true-life story that pulled me right in from page one.It provided me with the joys of love, marriage, and children offsetting the tragedies of death, poverty, and hard times." Trudi LoPreto for Readers' Favorite

"This novel is great for any reader interested in the Great Depression, war, and society of the 1900s." Michelle Robertson for Readers' Favorite.

Karen Truesdell Riehl's writing achievements are remarkable, given the award-winning author's lifelong battle with dyslexia. She was unable to read until the age of ten. Her published works now include a memoir, Love and Madness: My Private Years with George C. Scott, telling of her 30-year hidden liaison with the international film star, five novels, eight plays and a radio comedy series, The Quibbles, available from ArtAge Publications at http://www.seniortheatre.com/product/the-quibbles-radio-shows/. Her children's play, Alice in Cyberland, was an award winner in the National Southwest Writers Contest.

Karen's nonfiction novel, Helga, was selected best nonfiction book (military and politics) by the 2015 San Diego Book Awards. When the author met Helga in 1977, she was an elementary school librarian, a 1948 German immigrant. Asked about her experience during the war, Helga quietly revealed she had been a "Jugend," a member of Hitler's child army,Ten-year-old Helga is forced to join the Hitler youth weekly meetings. Lies and treats are used to build her allegiance to the Fuhrer. As the war draws nearer to Berlin, Helga is sent away to a Youth Training Camp. Her slow disillusionment and harrowing escape home, is a coming-of-age story of a young girl's survival of Nazi mind control.

Her romance novel, Hello Again, was a finalist in the 2015 San Diego Book Awards. Shannon Taggert falls in love with Nate, a graduate student teaching assistant. But there's another woman in Nate's life, Tally, the daughter of Walter, his mentor and benefactor. Before meeting Shannon, as Walter lay dying, Nate promised to marry his daughter.

The Ghosts of Fort Ord was inspired by living for a month near the abandoned military base.

After having lived for several years in Terre Haute, Karen was inspired to write a story about scandals in a fictional small town in Indiana, Freedom's Sins.

Saturday Night Dance Club, was inspired by a true story of four couples, from the 1900's to 1930's, touched by the Great War, organized crime, the Depression and the threat of another war, finding sanctuary in their weekly dance club.

Drawing from her own experience, Karen wrote Bad Girl: A Play. The Safe Haven Home for Unwed Mothers provides shelter from a judgmental society, but reveals its hypocrisy as well. The young women from all levels of society, rich and poor, share only their shame.